I never expected my books to do even as well as they have. I still feel grateful for it, every single day.

..this feeling haunts and inhabits me, like a sickness. it covers me, like skin.

I never expected my books to do even as well as they have. I still feel grateful for it, every single day.

The bad blood rose in me, just like wine.

I used to hate flying. I would sit there, rigid, convinced that if I relaxed, the plane would drop out of the sky.

I knew Id always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, Well, Id rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one.

Respect your characters, even the ­minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story; it is worth thinking about what your minor characters' stories are, even though they may intersect only slightly with your protagonist's.